As part of its global restructuring plan, Merck late last year vowed to re-establish itself as a leading research-intensive biopharmaceutical company.

A month into 2014, the Whitehouse Station-based company announced a potentially lucrative alliance with rival drugmakers and the U.S. government for Alzheimer’s research, and a separate collaboration with three pharmaceutical companies to test its promising experimental cancer drug.

From October through December, Merck earned $781 million, or 26 cents per share, compared with $908 million, or 30 cents per share, over the same period in 2012. Revenue fell 4 percent for the quarter, to $11.32 billion. Projections had been $11.36 billion. The 2013 total revenue of $44 billion was also down about 7 percent from the year before.

In a conference call with analysts, chief executive Kenneth Frazier sounded the corporate leader’s expected upbeat note, but acknowledged “the events of last year underscore the imperative for Merck to remain both a highly innovative company and one that responds to the fast evolving health care environment.”

It was a turbulent 2013 for the second largest U.S. drugmaker, which faced generic competition to blockbusters Januvia, for diabetes; and more dramatically, Singulair, the asthma medicine whose sales were down 69 percent from 2012.

In October, the company said it would overhaul its research labs and lay off 8,500 employees worldwide in addition to its previously announced 7,500. Those 16,000 job cuts — part of its $2.5 billion cost-cutting plan — have not been made, a spokeswoman confirmed.

Frazier said the global restructuring would allow the company to invest in other places.
“Merck remains committed to innovation,” he said.

On Tuesday, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced a partnership with Merck, New Brunswick-based Johnson & Johnson and eight other drugmakers in a $230 million effort to identify new approaches to treat Alzheimer’s, diabetes, lupus and arthritis.

And this morning, Merck said it would team up with drugmakers Pfizer, Amgen and Incyte on a combination treatment for its top pipeline prospect, MK-3475. The drug is one of a new class of experimental treatments that use the body’s own immune system to attack and kill tumors, and one that Merck says has shown promising results in clinical trials.

Roger Perlmutter, who took over as head of Merck research and development last April, has led the company’s shift toward vaccines, cancer, diabetes and hospital care. He said future collaborations with other pharmaceutical companies, like the ones announced this week, “will emerge throughout the year.”

The companywide shakeup has not spared New Jersey. That includes plans to shutter its sprawling Summit campus in Union County, Merck’s animal health headquarters. The division remains profitable despite a 3 percent sales drop last quarter to $871 million, the result of a voluntary suspension of its Zilmax feed supplement. The drug remains off the market.

Frazier reiterated the company’s intention to review its animal health business -- the world’s second largest -- along with its consumer health business, which sells Coppertone sun care items and nonprescription Claritin allergy pills. Frazier said he’s determining whether they’d be more valuable inside or outside of Merck, and will decide by year’s end.

Steve Brozak, who covers the pharmaceutical industry for WBB Securities in Clark, said the possibility of selling off one or both divisions would fit with the company’s ongoing overhaul.

“It would streamline and refocus the business on oncology, and it would buy Merck more time,” he said. Cancer vaccines, while costly to develop and bring to market, also have big revenue potential, far exceeding over-the-counter consumer medicines or animal health therapies.

“It’s risky, but they have to do something to differentiate themselves,” Brozak said.